We here at Kobold Press wanted to share the fun news: The good folks at Dungeonmastering.com approached Marc Radle, our esteemed art director, about doing a weekly blog about his work with various companies. Each week, he plans to talk a bit about an illustration from his portfolio, explaining both the brainstorming and the backstory. Then, the reader who posts the Coolest Comment about the art and/or that week’s blog post (may be something serious or funny or insightful) gets the original illustration mailed to them, for free! For the inaugural post, Marc discusses the Lamia Serpent Blade Warrior he did for Advanced Races #8: Lamia, so check it out!

Google+ has a strong community of tabletop RPG fans, many of whom use it as a platform for running games using Hangouts

If you have a Google Account, it’s easy to activate G+ and join the Kobold Press community; if you don’t, it’s easy to set one up

It has great features (such as video integration) which open up possibilities for cool online community events

Most importantly: it lets us spend our time talking to gamers instead of wrestling with technical issues and playing Whack-A-Mole with spammers. Seriously, we hate those guys. (Spammers, not gamers.)

Which brings up another thing: rather than abandon the forums to spam, or have them live on in a sad half-life where people are posting but we’re not replying, the Kobold Forums are going to shut down completely at 6:00 PM and disappear from the site. They’ve served us well for many years, and we’ve had great discussions there, but it’s time for us to move those discussions to a new home.

Let us know if you have any questions, and we’ll see you at the new place!

The Midgard Campaign Setting fan community is growing faster than an ill-advised alchemy experiment in Maillon! It’s an active, vibrant community, full of people who want to take what we’ve created and run with it in exciting and fun directions. So we thought, why not make it easier for them?

To encourage fan sites and free fan-created projects using Midgard and other Kobold Press IP, we’ve just launched the Kobold Press Community Use Policy. This policy covers free, fan-created material only; if you want to do a commercial project, check out our Freelancer Guidelines.

Along with guidelines on what fans can use and how, we’re also offering the first Kobold Press Community Use Package of resources. This first package contains 10 of the Midgard setting’s most iconic characters — and we’ll be adding new packages over time.

Tell us what you think in the comments! And if you have a Midgard fan project underway, or if this inspires you to start one, please let us know. We’d love to see it.

Although many a roleplayer may bemoan the lack of women in our community, I’m here to tell you they are out there, waiting to be enticed by goblins, treasure, and adventures.

On Friday, April 12th, I hosted the fifth monthly Queer Geek! Ladies’ Gaming Night in Seattle, Washington. Usually we all get together and play board games, but this month I invited Paizo out to run the attendees through some Pathfinder games. GMs from Paizo included Crystal Frasier, Liz Courts, Sarah Marie Teter, and Erik Keith, and Pathfinder Society GMs were Anna Murray and Dorothy Lindman. We had a great turnout—there were 30 players in six Pathfinder games, and many of the staff from Paizo came out to support their fellow GMs and have a few beers. Paizo provided some goblin plushies, shot glasses, and gaming material for giveaways to the players. Games played included the Beginner Box and variations thereof, and a couple of Pathfinder Society intro scenarios. Many of the players expressed interest in playing more Pathfinder and possibly doing continuous campaigns at future events.

In the past couple of years, Stuffer Shack has been running a contest that awards a worthy blogging site with the title of RPG Site of the Year (SOTY). Today, several sites are up for voting for the 2013 SOTY award, and one of them is Kobold Press! Yes! Us!

Please do take a moment to venture forth to the official SOTY award site, take a look at the current nominees, and vote! The Kobolds would, of course, appreciate your vote for Kobold Press. Feel free to spread the word far and wide, too!

We are ever small, but fierce, and we thank each and every person who reads the site or who submits articles for their help in making this a wonderful place to be for those who enjoy fantasy roleplaying games. Stay fierce, friends of the Kobolds!